A Song in Their Hearts, but Not Love

Each week in Curtain Raisers, we invite a local theater artist to attend a show of his or her choosing and discuss the results. Recently, the actress Sutton Foster opted to see "Once," the musical playing at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre written by Enda Walsh and directed by John Tiffany. Ms. Foster's Broadway credits include "Shrek the Musical," "Little Women" and "The Drowsy Chaperone," as well as Tony-winning turns in "Thoroughly Modern Millie" and "Anything Goes," which she left last month. She's currently starring in the ABC Family television show "Bunheads," wherein she plays a former Las Vegas showgirl turned small-town dance instructor.

Adapted from the Oscar-winning independent film of 2006, "Once" tells the story of a young Czech woman (Cristin Milioti) with a broken vacuum cleaner who finds her repairman, as well as a more profound level of dust removal, in an Irishman (Steve Kazee) she meets in a Dublin pub. Within a week, the two are writing and performing songs together, and watching as each makes the other capable of more than either had ever achieved before.

"They're not talking about it, they just do it, and it's like they've sung together a million times before," Ms. Foster said.

Of all the live instruments played onstage in "Once," none are wedding bells, and despite various swells of emotional affection and desire, the two main characters—known only as "Guy" and "Girl"—don't sleep together. In fact, Ms. Milioti's character isn't looking for a lover. Her search is for a collaborator.

"It's incredibly modern," Ms Foster said. "They don't even kiss. It would oddly lessen it if they did."

It's a story that artists in particular might relate to. "To find someone who really gets you at a creative level, that's rare," she said. "We know what that is. We all pray for it."

It is a kind of union for which women don't get thrown showers: unconsummated, acategorical, and marked by a consuming passion and productivity. In its intimacy and vulnerability, Ms. Foster said, this kind of bond can mimic romantic love—even if it's not. "It is a form of love," she insisted.

ENLARGE

Sutton Foster
Lizzie Simon for The Wall Street Journal

But "Once" wasn't just about two-person mutual admiration societies. It took an uncommon and less pitying gaze, she said, at ephemeral relationships in general, asking the audience to celebrate the idea—albeit with a lot of sighing, longing and crying—that sometimes people come in to your life, transform you, and then go. The framing of that impermanence is where "Once" gains its grip on the audience.

"It's profound and beautiful," Ms. Foster said. "There have been relationships that opened up my heart but were limited in time. It wasn't the fairy tale, forever love, but it's not about "failed." They've all changed me."

She mentioned three relationships in particular that fit the description, including the one with her "Thoroughly Modern Millie" co-star, Christian Borle, with whom she split in 2010 after six years of marriage. Is it easier to accept when it's playing out on a stage, compared with when it's playing out in one's own life?

"It kills me," she said. "I'm 37, I'm divorced, I'm single right now. I can be an emotionally guarded person. But ['Once'] speaks to me on such a deep level. When something taps into that it's scary but it's really exciting."

Ms. Foster was seeing the show for the second time, enjoying a hard-earned break from a year's worth of eight-a-weeks in "Anything Goes" by going to see a lot of theater. "That's been one of the great blessings, to see stuff and become inspired again."

"Once," she noted, has some unusual features as Broadway goes. Before the show even begins, the supporting cast of a dozen performers is there on the wood-paneled, rusty-mirrored pub set, with house lights up, playing a rousing set of tunes together. It's meant to feel like an informal jam session, introducing the audience to the folksy-bar-rock world of the show. But the production is up to something more transformative in that it ruptures, if not the fourth wall, then a kind of preset assumption about the divisions in a commercial theater house.

"They've cracked it open," she said.

There aren't any tricks that follow—no flying superheroes, no expensive illusions, no celebrities—only the magic of watching people make something from nothing with their own hands. Though it is certainly crafted by a playwright, director, choreographer, pair of songwriters (they being the stars of the 2006 film, Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová, whose songs have been transplanted to the stage) and a team of designers, "Once" appears to spring completely from the bodies of its performers.

"Every actor plays an instrument. It blows my mind. I can't do that. I couldn't be in this show."

In its reliance on human performance, there's an old-fashion quality to "Once," yet it excited Ms. Foster about where musical theater is headed—especially where contemporary pieces are concerned. "You can't beat Cole Porter," she said, "but it's so inspiring to see the future. I feel like my heart is going to explode. It makes me want to get up and be part of it."

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